2|10|1765 Thomas Gray , English poet, wrote from Glamis to the poet and academic James Beattie politely declining the offer of an honorary degree at the University of Aberdeen.

2|10|1841 James Fraser, the Edinburgh-born publisher of Fraser’s Magazine, dies, possibly from blows delivered by an author, Grantley Berkeley MP, outraged by a review which Fraser had published of his novel Berkeley Castle; Berkeley subsequently shot the reviewer (William McGinn) in a duel. Ref: 1002.02(LS)
2|10|1852 Thomas Thomson, the Edinburgh antiquary, dies. 2.1002.03(LS)
2|10|1854 Patrick Geddes, environmentalist and author, born, Ballater, Aberdeen-shire. He was a disciple of Ruskin who was one of the first to write about city development. Ref: 1002.04(LS)

9|10|1782 William Nimmo, historian of the County of Stirlingshire, dies . Ref: 1009.01(LS)
9|10|1843 The Music Hall, which housed lectures by Dickens and Thackeray, among others, was added to the Assembly Rooms in Edinburgh. Ref: 1009.02(LS)

15|10|1684 Allan Ramsay, wig-maker, bookseller and poet, is born in the mining village of Leadhills, Lanarkshire. He will found Britain’s first circulating library there in 1725. In the same year he will write his pastoral drama, The Gentle Shepherd which, together with his antholgies of Scottish poetry – Tea Table Miscellanies (1724-37) – will make him famous. Ref: 1015.01(LS)++
15|10|1831 Isabella Bird (Bishop), author and traveller, born . Ref: 1015.02(LS)
15|10|1943 William Soutar, bedridden Perth poet, dies, aged 45. His moving Diaries of a Dying Man describe his final years. Ref: 1015.03(LS)
15|10|1986 First Scottish Book Fortnight begins. Ref: 1015.04(LS)
15|10|1998 Iain Crichton Smith, poet and novelist, dies Taynuilt, Argyll. His work, both in English and in Gaelic, is regarded as amongst the best of twentieth century Scottish literature. Ref: 1015.05(LS)

17|10|1774 Robert Fergusson, the Scottish poet regarded by leading critics as second only to Burns, dies, Edinburgh. Ref: 1017.01(LS)
17|10|1826 Thomas Carlyle,historian, marries Jane Baillie Welsh, letter writer, at Templand, Dumfries-shire. It becomes the most spectacular of literary marriages. Samuel Butler (1835-1902) will observe: “It was very good of God to let Carlyle and Mrs Carlyle marry one another and so make only two people miserable instead of four, besides being very amusing.”. Ref: 1017.02(LS)

18|10|1980 Edwin Way Teale (1899-1980), American naturalist and writer with literary interests, dies. In Springtime in Britain (1970) he described hunting for James Boswell’s last resting place at Auchinleck. Ref: 1018.00
18|10|1995 Tom Buchan, poet, dies, Forres . Ref: 1018.01(LS)

27|10|1736 James MacPherson, poet and translator, born, Ruthven, Inverness-shire. In 1760 he will publish Fragments of Ancient Poetry Collected in the Highlands of Scotland and Translated from the Gaelic or Erse Language, giving rise to the Ossian Controversy. Ref: 1027.01(LS)
27|10|1989 Allan Campbell Maclean, novelist, dies. Ref: 1027.02(LS)

28|10|1922 Clifford Hanley (1922-1999), novelist and lyricist is born in Glasgow. His classic account of his childhood Dancing in the Streets will appear in 1958. Ref: 1028.01(LS)

29|10|1740 James Boswell, the first great biographer, born, Edinburgh. Ref: 1029.01
29|10|1879 John Blackwood, publisher, dies. Ref: 1029.02(LS)
29|10|1916 Jessie Kesson, novelist, is born, Inverness. Her fiction, partly autobiographical, will provide vivid picture picture of working life in North East Scotland. Ref: 1029.03(LS)

November

Cauld winter was howlin’ o’er muir and oe’r mountains
And wild was the surge on the dark rolling sea
When I met about daybreak a bonnie young lassie
Who asked me the road and the miles to DundeeTraditional

1|11|1778 Mary Brunton (Balfour), novelist, born, Orkney. Her novels will include Self Control (1810) and Discipline (1814). Ref: 1101.01(LS)
1|11|1897 Naomi Mitchison (1897-1999), author, born, Edinburgh. Ref: 1101.02(LS)
1|11|1922 | The Porpoise Press established. It will play an important part in the modern Scottish Literary Renaissance . Ref: 1101.03(LS)
1|11|1950 | Raymond Vetesse, poet, born, Arbroath. Ref: 1101.04(LS)
1|11|2002 The film of Alan Warner’s best selling novel Morvern Callar is released in the UK. Ref: 1101.05

2|11|1706 | Daniel Defoe, Government spy and author of Robinson Crusoe, wrote to Robert Harley informing him that he had commenced his panegyric Caledonia, in order to convince the Scots that he was one of them. Ref: 1102.01(LS)
2|11|1773 | James Boswell and Samuel Johnson arrived at Auchinleck, Boswell’s father’s house. Ref: 1102.02(LS)

4|11|1771 | Scottish poet and newspaper owner/editor James Montgomery is born Irvine, Ayrshire. Ref: 1104.01
4|11|1866 | Helen Jane Findlater, novelist, born, Lochearnhead. She will collaborate with her sister, Mary, in well-regarded novels of manners of which Crossriggs is still in print. Ref: 1104.02

6|11|1764 | Robert Heron (1764-1807), the first, if a somewhat inaccurate, biographer of Burns, born New Galloway . Ref: 1106.01(LS)
6|11|1894 | Philip Gilbert Hamerton, poet, painter and critic, at one time a denizen at Loch Awe, dies at Boulogne-sur-Seine in France. Ref: 1106.02(LS)

8|11|1849 | William Robertson Smith born Aberdeenshire. He was prosecuted for heresy for his article about the Bible in the Encylopaedia Britannica, but acquitted. He later became its editor. Ref: 1108.01(LS)
8|11|1891 | Neil Miller Gunn, novelist of the modern Scottish literary renaissance, born at Dunbeath, Caithness. Highland River (1937) will brilliantly evoke his boyhood. Ref: 1108.01(LS)
8|11|1941 | David Black, poet, born South Africa. Ref: 1108.01(LS)

9|11|1841 | William Black, lurid novelist of the ‘Celtic Twilight’, born Glasgow . Ref: 1109.01(LS)
9|11|1858 | George Borrow (1803-81), traveller and novelist, at Inverness visiting the Highlands and Northern Isles in search of the Picts. Ref: 1109.02(LS)

10|11|1711 | Robert Hay Drummond, the benefactor who helped to establish the Innerpefferay Library, is born . Ref: 1110.01(LS)
*10|11|1728 | Oliver Goldsmith, playwright (She Stoops to Conquer) and poet, is born in Ireland. He will study medicine in Edinburgh, take a short Highland Tour, and attend formal dances at the Old Town Halls off the High Street. In London he will make the acquaintance of Tobias Smollett, the Scottish novelist. Ref: 1110.02(LS)*

11|11|1703 | Martinmas. A paper proposing the erection of Lending Libraries throughout the Highlands by Rev. James Kirkwood (1650-1708) was read at the SPCK. Ref: 1111.01
11|11|1919 Hamish Henderson (1919-2002), war poet and distinguished twentieth century folklorist, born . Ref: 1111.01(LS)
11|11|1935 | Annie S. Swan writes to Dot Allan to congratulate her on her book about William Wallace . Ref: 1111.01(LS)

19|11|1780 | William Laidlaw, poet and friend of Scott, born . Ref: 1119.01(LS)
19|11|1838 | Elgin-born Robert Watson (1746-1838), adventurer and editor of Chevalier de Johnstone‘s Memoirs of the Rebellion, 1746, strangled himself in a public house. Ref: 1119.02

21|11|1747 | Joseph Farington, diarist, born. In 1792 he will visit Scotland to make illustrations for John Knox’s Scenery of Scotland, but the project will be abandoned on Knox’s death. Ref: 1121.01
21|11|1835 | James Hogg, poet and novelist, dies| 2.1121.02(LS)
**21|11|1855 | Jane Welsh Carlyle goes to the Income Tax Commissioners in order to seek a reduction in the tax on her husband’s earnings, fearing that Carlyle will do his own cause little good. She is partially successful, and relieved that Carlyle did not go himself. Ref: 1121.03(LS)**
21|11|1880 | Thomas Tod Stoddart, the angler-poet, dies . Ref: 1121.04(LS)
21|11|1936 | James A. Mackay, biographer, born, Inverness. He will edit Robert Burns’ works, and write a biography of him. Ref: 1121.05(LS)

24|11|1759 | Tobias Smollett is tried and convicted for libelling Admiral Knowles in the Critical Review. He is imprisoned in the King’s Bench Prison which he describes in his novel Sir Lancelot Greaves. Ref: 1124.01(LS)**
24|11|1790 | Robert Henry, the Stirling-born historian, dies, Edinburgh. Ref: 1124.02(LS)
24|11|1948 At the end of her life Anna Buchan A will write a reflective family biography, Unforgettable, Unforgotten (1945), a significant source of information about John Buchan. She dies, of cancer on this day, at Bank House, Peebles, 1124.03
24|11|1996 | Sorley Maclean [MacGill-Eain, Somhairle], Gaelic poet, dies. Ref: 1124.04(LS)

26|11|1747 | The ‘Black Dinner’, the subject of an old ballad, took place. Ref: 1126.01(LS)
26|11|1775 | Mrs Anne Grant, author of Letters From The Highlands, describes her daily life in Fort Augustus where her father is quartermaster in a letter to a friend in Glasgow. Ref: 1126.02(LS)

27|11|1778 | John Murray, the Scottish publisher who treated his authors, including Byron and Campbell, with great generosity, born . Ref: 1127.01(LS)

1|12|1887 First appearance of A Study in Scarlet by Conan Doyle . Ref: 1201.1

2|12|1822 David Masson, biographer of Milton and Drummond of Hawthornden, is born, Aberdeen . Ref: 1202.01(LS)**
2|12|1956 Janice Galloway, novelist, born Ardrossan, Ayrshire. Her first novel will be the highly praised The Trick is to Keep Breathing (1990). Ref: 1202.02(LS)

3|12|1894 Death from a cerebral haemorrhage of Robert Louis Stevenson, in Samoa. The Samoans revere him and call him ‘Tusitala’, the story-teller. Ref: 1203.01

5|12|1824 Walter Chalmers Smith, hymn-writer and poet, known as ‘Orwell’, is born in Aberdeen. Ref: 1205.01(LS)

6|12|1905 William Sharp, the novelist and poet, who adopted the name ‘Fiona Macleod’ (whom he regarded as an almost totally separate person), dies. Ref: 1206.01
6|12|1934 Forrest Wilson, author of Super Gran and other children’s novels, is born, Renfrew. Ref: 1206.02(LS)
6|12|1995| American journalist James Barrett Reston (1909-95) who was born in Clydebank, Dunbartonshire, dies. Ref 1206.03 (LS)
7|12|1837 Robert Nicholl, Perthshire poet dies, aged 33 years. A prominent obelisk commemorates him in his native place, Tullybelton. Ref: 1207.01
7|12|1947 Ann Fine, novelist, including children’s novels, such as Madame Doubtfire, is born in Leicestershire. Ref: 1207.02

8|12|1859 Thomas De Quincey (1785-1859), opium-addict and critic, long resident in Midlothian and in Glasgow, dies at Mavis Bank, Lasswade, near Edinburgh. Ref: 1208.01

10|12|1824 George MacDonald, novelist and teller of fairy tales, born Huntly, Aberdeenshire. Ref: 1210.01
10|12|1907 Rumer Godden (1907-1998), novelist (Black Narcissus), who lived in Moniave, Dumfries-shire towards the end of her life, is born in Kent. Ref: 1210.02

13|12|1585 William Drummond, poet, is born at Hawthornden of which estate he becomes laird in 1610. He will be the first great Scottish poet to write in English. Ref: 1213.01(LS)

14|12|1756 First performance of the tragedy Douglas by (Reverend) John Home, in Edinburgh. It calls forth the cry, by a member of the audience, “Whaur’s yer Wullie Shakespeare noo?”. Ref: 1214.01(LS)
14|12|1895 John MacNair Reid (1895-1954), novelist and poet, born Glasgow. Ref: 1214.02(LS)
:
15|12|1791 Robert Burns writes the famous letter to Mrs. Maclehose beginning “I have some merit, my ever dearest of women, in attracting and securing the heart of Clarinda”. Ref: 1215.01
15|12|1981 Claud Cockburn, subversive, great-grandson of Lord Cockburn, dies, Cork. Ref: 1215.02

19|12|1818 Mary Brunton, novelist, dies in Edinburgh of a fever, aged 40. Ref: 1219.01(LS)
19|12|1832 Francis Jeffrey (1773-1850), critic, elected Member of Parliament for Edinburgh. Ref: 1219.02(LS)
19|12|1923 Gordon Jackson, the actor who appeared in several notable films made from famous Scottish books, including Whisky Galore (1949) and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969), is born. Ref: 0719.03(LS)

20|12|1883 Oscar Wilde lectures in Edinburgh on ‘The Value of Art in Modern Life’. Ref: 1220.01(LS)

24|12|1889 Charles MacKay, Perth-born journalist and songwriter, who lived at one time at Soroba House, Oban, dies. Ref: 0724.01(LS)
24|12|1907 The ‘Daft Days’ begin (and end on ‘Hansel Monday’, the first Monday of the New Year). ‘The Daft Days’ are the subject of a poem by Robert Fergusson, which gave Neil Munro the title for his novel of that name, published in 1907. Ref: 1224.02(LS)

26|12|1780 Mary Somerville, notable as a nineteenth century writer on scientific subjects, born, Jedburgh. Ref: 1226.01(LS)
26|12|1947 Liz Lochhead, poet, born Motherwell, Lanarkshire. Her collections of poetry will include Bagpipe Muzak (1991); her plays will include Mary Queen of ScotsGot Her Head Chopped Off (1987). In 2011 she becomes the firs woman to be Scots Makar Ref: 1226.01(LS)

27|12|1800 Hugh Blair, poet and critic, dies. He was a leading supporter of James MacPherson’s ‘Ossianic’ poetry. Ref: 1227.01(LS)
27|12|1904 First performance of Peter Pan by James Barrie. Ref: 1227.01(LS)

31|12|1830 Alexander Smith, poet and author of A Summer In Skye born, Kilmarnock, Ayrshire. Ref: 1231.01(LS)1231.01
31|12|1868 James David Forbes, author and notable British Alpine traveller, dies. Ref: 1231.02
31|12|1916 Neil Paterson (1915-1995), the Banffshire novelist and screenwriter, is born. His most successful screenplay will be Room at the Top. Ref: 1231.03